Canva’s private market valuation soars to $4.7 billion

Venture capital investors who back tech start-ups typically demand protections to limit their downside risks, including through structures such as liquidation preferences. This means valuations for companies such as Canva are not directly comparable to those of listed companies.

Canva, which Ms Perkins founded in 2013 with Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams, aims to allow anyone to easily design products including greeting cards, posters, websites and presentation slides.

Ms Perkins said the additional investment will fund the company’s foray into the enterprise market and enable the startup to put more resources into its presentations product which she describes as an alternative to “death by Power Point”.

Canva for Enterprise is aimed at large businesses seeking to create products in line with their branding.

“We have been inundated with requests from our customers for this for some time now,” Ms Perkins said. “So even though we’ve been used by 85 per cent of the Fortune 500 companies, they have been asking for the same features over and over again, they’ve being asking for the ability to really control their brand.”

Canva Enterprise will cost $30 per month per person. Canva’s basic product is free to use.

We hadn’t anticipated raising another round in such short succession.

Melanie Perkins

Ms Perkins said Canva has no immediate plans for an IPO. The company has previously said it will likely list in the US when the time comes.

Kyle Doherty, managing director of investor General Catalyst, said Canva’s products were taking hold inside companies. “We’ve seen their Canva Pro subscriptions gain considerable traction and think they are well poised to push into the enterprise to address even larger organisations.”

Rick Baker, managing director of Blackbird, said he thinks Canva was still at the beginning of its journey.

“Canva stands out as an ‘unique unicorn’, one that has been able to continue its exceptional growth while still being profitable,” he said. “Perkins and her team are proof that you can create global companies from the shores of Australia. “

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Since Canva’s launch, 1.8 billion designs have been created on the platform and the startup has more than 20 million users each month.

While Ms Perkins said Canva continued to be profitable she would not provide any update on Canva’s most recent filing to ASIC. The company recorded a maiden profit in 2017 of $1.8 million.

Ms Perkins said Canva only served 0.62 per cent of the internet population so there was still a lot of opportunity for growth to fulfil the vision she first had for the startup when she launched it from her living room in Perth.

“We still have a very, very long way to go to live up to my very ambitious dreams from from back in that living room,” she said .

Cara is the small business editor for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald based in Melbourne